21 July 2009

Much has been written about the Telecom-Vodafone duopoly over the mobile phone networks in New Zealand. Soon the duopoly will become a oligopoly (well, already is), and hopefully force changes in pricing of calls and text messages between Mobile phones, which have been suggested by the Commerce comission which also has had much written about it (I would normally have links, but come on "Is your google broken?").

2° has aggressively advertised using the hilarious, but now over used, Rhys Darby as well as giving a sim card and $5 credit as part of it's chinwag promotion. In terms of log-o, I am not in favour of the making logos three dimesional, they seem like cheap tricks. Hopefully they will revert to a 2D logo instead. The thing that 2° has done well is come up looking like the underdog, the little guy, with Rhys Darby being the loved character of Murray from Flight of the Conchords, playing on the New Zealand pscyhe. I'm sure 2° have spent a lot on advertising and promotion to get the company off the ground and get a good foot hold in the mobile market. And so far it has been successful without a plan or phone ever being shown.

On the flip side of advertising budget, Black and White mobile launched earlier this year. The television ads that featured looked like clip art in a powerpoint presentation. The website is no better and follows a similar design. This company can really be considered the little guy, the design follows the company line and business name of being simple with no strings and caches.

The logo itself, is American Typewriter Bold tightly kerned white on black, I would say it doesn't suit a company that is trying to get new customers and goes against all the warm-lowercase-sansserif logo trend. Instead a bold strong logo more along the lines of a hardware product.

Overall, is exciting to see more companies coming in to the market, it can only help lower the cost of mobile phone usage in New Zealand. But in terms of design I am quite disappointed by the two logos here.